| NSF Org: |
DUE Division Of Undergraduate Education |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | September 11, 2013 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | February 21, 2019 |
| Award Number: | 1347675 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Abby Ilumoka
DUE Division Of Undergraduate Education EDU Directorate for STEM Education |
| Start Date: | December 1, 2013 |
| End Date: | September 30, 2019 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $572,190.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $572,190.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
4400 UNIVERSITY DR FAIRFAX VA US 22030-4422 (703)993-2295 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
VA US 22030-4422 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): | |
| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.076 |
ABSTRACT
This WIDER Institutional Implementation project investigates and implements a teaching development process, the SIMPLE Design Framework, for creating design-based small groups to support faculty as they implement interactive teaching strategies. The project includes faculty from George Mason University's College of Science, Volgenau School of Engineering, and College of Education and Human Development in an interdisciplinary partnership that encourages discussion of disciplinary differences in teaching. The hypothesis is that by participating in support networks to attempt small changes, faculty will be able to make larger changes over time. The project uses strategies suggested by Rogers' (2003) Diffusion of Innovations as the theory of change.
In the SIMPLE model, faculty at different levels of experience in interactive teaching practices engage in discipline-based small groups that meet regularly and provide mentoring around common needs and interests. This provides faculty with limited teaching innovation experience to participate in the Teaching Design Groups and supports more experienced faculty in the scholarship of teaching in the Teaching Inquiry Groups. A key component to teaching development is the design memo, which is used to document and share interactive teaching experiences and serves as a starting point for the group discussions. The project also is collecting qualitative data to document how the teaching design or inquiry groups work together, the strategies instructors use, and the impact on teaching in STEM departments.
The broader impacts of this project include the creation of a transferable framework for institutions of higher education to use to facilitate the use of research-based and evidence-based teaching practices focused on student interaction. The principles of the framework give guidance as to group organization but allow flexibility across contexts, institutions and departments. The implementation of interactive teaching practices has been demonstrated to improve student learning particularly by groups of students who have historically lacked representation in STEM disciplines. The sharing of the design memos and teaching resources through the SIMPLE Design wiki will allow data collected to be shared with a broad audience.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
The overall aim of this project was to expand and study a model for faculty teaching development in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, built around discipline-based teaching development groups, or learning communities. The SIMPLE model for faculty development, which was used to support STEM faculty in changing their teaching towards a more interactive approach, consists of five principles: (1) Sustainable (the groups are small, ongoing, and sustainable); (2) Incremental (the group members agree to make small, incremental changes in their teaching); (3) Mentoring (faculty are provided with a supportive environment to share their ideas, experience, etc.); (4) People-driven (groups are organized around the members’ needs and aim to address them); and (5) Learning Environment (the groups focus on creating more interactive learning environments for students).
The project had two major goals:
1. Support faculty use of evidence-based and research-based teaching practices both in terms of implementing research-based practices and collecting evidence to support interactive teaching.
2. Broaden implementation of the SIMPLE model for sustainable faculty teaching development within and across multiple STEM departments.
Through this project, teaching development groups were created in seven STEM programs at George Mason University. Each teaching development group included approximately five to eight participants. Five of the groups met formally (in a structured, scheduled fashion) for at least two academic years, and one group has continued to meet for over four years. One group established as a teaching development group under this project has transitioned to a discipline-based community of transformation supported by an NSF-funded project that builds on the results of this project.
In addition to teaching development groups, this project also created a teaching inquiry group to provide mentoring and community for faculty interested in conducting research on teaching and learning in STEM. Through participation in the teaching inquiry group, six faculty from across STEM fields learned about the scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) and engaged in their own pedagogical research projects with feedback from other members of the group. Faculty who participated in the teaching inquiry group continue to be active in pedagogical research and in other SOTL groups across campus.
In studying instructors’ motivation for participating in a teaching development group, we learned that instructors’ reasons for participating in SIMPLE teaching development groups can be categorized broadly as either relating to a specific teaching challenge or situation or relating to a general interest in engaging with colleagues around improving teaching. In the first category, participants identified a particular teaching-related issue they hoped to address with support from the group. In the second category, which was considerably more common, a general interest in improving teaching and in sharing with and learning from other instructors.
In studying if and how participating instructors changed their teaching during their time as part of a teaching development group, we learned that teaching change is a slow, incremental process; it can take significant time over multiple semesters for faculty to learn about, adapt, and adopt new teaching strategies. To facilitate ongoing and sustained change, institutions must support teaching development groups and provide instructors with the time and resources necessary to make research-based changes to their teaching. Through this project in combination with results from our prior work, we have also learned that small sustainable changes accumulate to create larger pronounced change to interactive, student-centered teaching.
Last Modified: 01/29/2020
Modified by: Jill K Nelson
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